Semrush: AI Overviews now show on 88% of tracked commercial keywords.
Google's AI Overviews appeared on 88% of the 400 commercial keywords Semrush tracked in August 2026, up from 45.75% a year earlier. Weighted by search volume, coverage reached 97.08%.
Semrush published the study on 21 October. It followed a fixed panel of 400 US keywords in banking, ecommerce and software, built around five kinds of buying search: alternatives, "best X for Y", pricing, reviews and brand-versus-brand. It checked them every month from September 2025 to August 2026 using its US desktop data. The keywords that still had no AI Overview in August made up less than 3% of the panel's search volume.
The biggest jumps came in the searches people make just before they buy. "Best X for Y" keywords reached 96.12%. Review searches went from 30.14% to roughly 89%, and brand-versus-brand comparisons from 63.41% to about 86.6%. Alternatives sat near 82.8%. In ecommerce, coverage rose from 32.62% to 85.11%, and 12 of the 15 industry and search-type combinations ended at 80% or higher.
The study measures whether an AI Overview appears, not what happens to clicks, and it covers US desktop results only. PPC Land, which reported it on 22 October, estimates each industry and search-type group holds only about 20 to 30 keywords, and notes that Semrush sells the tools its advice points to. Separate data published the same week suggests Google is still where the traffic comes from: Marie Haynes' study of 100 sites put ChatGPT sessions at 0.62% of Google organic volume.
Arabic queries and Gulf markets are not in the data, so the figures can't be applied directly to Saudi Arabia or the UAE. But banks, telcos and ecommerce brands in the region that depend on review and comparison searches should look at how AI Overviews describe them in their own markets, rather than assume a top ranking still brings the same clicks.
Why it matters
Review and comparison searches are where people decide what to buy, and Google now answers most of them with AI before showing any links.
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